A GRAVE CONCERN (Food Truck Mysteries Book 8) Read Online Free PDF

won’t be running?”
    She turned to face me. “Hamilton Preston wanted the problem taken care of. He felt that they were a blight on the city. You could try checking out Chesterfield or Yarmouth. They were pretty similar in their positions.”
    I nodded. I’d wondered if he’d been against some of the locations that the people here had taken in Capital City. The Preston family had a business downtown, which would color his perspective of people on the streets in front of his business.
    “I’ve listened to them,” I lied, “but I just didn’t find them to be as riveting as Preston, especially his personal story.”
    The woman nodded her head. “Yeah, I wrote that article, but it was the real deal. Preston had some bad family situations earlier in life. He was supposed to run for office a few years ago, but a situation caused him to back out. I think the city would have benefited from him back then.”
    I nodded, hoping she would continue. It had to be lonely here, and I’ve found that most people will gladly talk when presented with an audience.
    “I liked the story. He’d been a bit of a wastrel before that. Granted, he’d run the family business, but after that failed run at office, Hamilton really turned his life around. It’s amazing what adversity can do for a person.”
    I asked a few questions, but the woman was long on generalities and short on specifics. The earlier run had been anticlimactic. After a short run for office, he’d dropped out of the race. It had been around the time that his brother had disappeared.
    While I thought that his website mentioned no brothers, she seemed quite adamant. On the earlier campaign, she’d met the guy. He hadn’t been of the same caliber as his brother, at least in the campaign worker’s eyes, but he was definitely a member of the Preston family. She didn’t have any idea why the website said otherwise, though a look of distaste on her face suggested that he wasn’t the type to appear in a family-oriented campaign.
    I headed back to the truck with the press release, which I put in my back pocket. I went into the truck and found the hot dogs already prepared for the homeless people. Carter must have done that before he left.
    I went out to Government Square and found Delores. She gratefully took the hot dog and blessed me repeatedly.
    I took the press release out of my pocket and folded it so just the photo was visible. “Delores, do you remember seeing this man before?”
    I knew that I was coloring her testimony, since I asked the question as partly a done deal, but I didn’t care. I knew that with her issues, I couldn’t see the courts allowing her testimony anyway. Besides, I wasn’t the police, and I couldn’t be chastised for asking questions of a non-witness.
    “That’s Hammy, the pig,” she said with glee.
    I had to admit that the names Hammy and Hamilton were close, so perhaps she had met this candidate. I could imagine that Preston would want to alter his name, both for anonymity and the fact that there were very few poor men named Hamilton. The name seemed to scream wealth.
    “When did you see him?” I asked. I was so thrilled to have confirmation of what I’d seen, even though it wouldn’t stand up in court.
    “Two or three days ago. He was here for just a few days, and then he went away.” She was eyeing the hot dogs, so I gave her another. “He tried to talk to me a few times, but I just ignored him. He reminded me too much of my third husband.” She wolfed down the hot dog and left before I could ask more.
    Albert, the war vet, had been watching our interaction, and he came up to me after she’d left. “He wasn’t who he pretended to be,” he said to me.
    “What do you mean?” I asked. The man was correct, but I wanted to know why he felt this way.
    “His fingernails were clean. When I was in the army, we were always supposed to watch for anomalies. That man hadn’t been out on the streets for long. He wanted something,